Re: [xsl] Q: to Jeni Tennison regarding your APress titles...

[Jeni Tennison <jeni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David,

> Tonight turned out to be slightly different as I came across a copy
> of your Beginning XSLT from APress released last March. About a
> month or two ago I had gone into the same store but unfortunately
> they didn't have anything in stock (I see this as a good thing as a
> book not in stock, especially in your case, means a copy has been
> sold :) I was surprised to find though that what I thought was a 2.0
> title was actually a 1.0 title. I could had sworn I had seen a copy
> of a 2.0 title of yours a few months back but in returning home and
> looking online it seems the 2.0 title is not due out for another
> month or two.

Right: "Beginning XSLT 2.0" won't be out for a while -- I want the
book to be as accurate as possible, and the specs are still changing
(albeit not by much and ever...so...slowly...). My original plan was
to wait until the end of the Last Call period before finishing off the
book, though Apress is keen for me to get it done sooner.

Meanwhile, "Beginning XSLT" (1.0) has just been reprinted for a second
time, I guess due to customer demand.

> What would your advice be on using your Beginning XSLT title as an
> instrument to sharpen and fine tune my skill sets as such that, in the
> end, I will be a better XSLT programmer because of the effort put forth?

If you don't want to read the book from start to finish, one approach
would be to look at each chapter's Review Questions and try to answer
them. I don't give "correct" answers, but the purpose of the questions
is to make sure you understand the material in the chapter fairly
thoroughly, so if you find a question is making you think, you could
take it as a hint to go back and read the relevant section of the
chapter.

>         - Are there specifics areas in which you feel a lot of so-called
> "experts" tend to miss the boat in how they understand something or 
> approach particular problems?

I know that it took me a long time to understand the difference
between XSLT patterns (which match) and XPath expressions (which
select), but once you understand this particular distinction many
things in XSLT become a lot clearer. It's also an area where the
language used in some books that I've read can be pretty fuzzy.

Whitespace and namespace handling are other things that it took me a
long time to get my head around, but they are more rarely important.

Constructing a good algorithm for performing a calculation using
recursion is a major skill in XSLT, particularly balancing the
conflicting requirements of writing readable, maintainable code,
writing efficient code, and writing reusable code.

>         - Are there portions of XSLT 1.0 that are rarely used in 
> practice (and as such not well understood) that, if implemented 
> correctly, could make my XSLT code cleaner, leaner, more efficient, 
> easier to maintain, or easier to fine tune and/or debug?

Keys are the only thing that comes to mind, though perhaps
<xsl:strip-space> and <xsl:preserve-space> are contenders. XSLT 1.0 is
pretty lean: there aren't many features there, so people tend to use
most of them.

> - And finally, leading up to your 2.0 release due out in a few
> months what areas of this title would you suggest as areas that will
> help me better understand (and therefore implement) the content you
> set forth in this upcoming title? Or in other words, from your
> standpoint, what portion(s) of XSLT 1.0 is and will remain as the
> absolute core of XSLT from now until the end of the foreseeable XSLT
> future?

"Beginning XSLT 2.0" will be approximately 75% the same as "Beginning
XSLT". The essence of the basic processing model of processing nodes
in order to get results doesn't change: I'd view that as the core of
XSLT.

My other book, "XSLT and XPath On The Edge" is written for more
advanced XSLT programmers, so perhaps you'd find that more helpful
(though I think "Beginning XSLT" is better written).

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/